THE NEW YOR.KER. airplane engines gradually destroyed d!; the ear's ability to pick up any sound in those frequencies," Forman contin- ues. "If you don't protect your ears, you are in danger of getting aviator's notch from your chain saw We see similar thIngs with rock and roll." @ Partial deafness is only the beginning. In the literature on amplified sound, there appears this sentence: "Loud noise causes blood vessels to constrict, the skin to pale, muscles to tense, and the adrenal hormone to be injected into the bloodstream; thus, the heart and nervous system of the individual are profoundly affected; animals, forced to listen to noise, become sullen, unresponsive, erratic, or violent." Has Schmidt ever heard of Iowa ear? The farmer on his tractor looks over his right shoulder, watching his planter or plow and sighting back down the row. This aims his left ear toward the tractor's engine. Iowa ear, always the left, is aviator's notch, grounded. Schmidt hears all this amiably, per- haps even gratefully, giving no sign that he has developed a notch of his own with regard to doctors. Forman changes the subject. He asks if Schmidt's wife, Terry, is hav- ing contractions. "N ot yet." Forman will deliver this imminent baby. He also looks after the Schmidts' existing child. Half a dozen years ago, before Forman and his partner, For- rest West, arrived in Albion, the Lovejoy Health Center was an over- grown field. "Before the clinic was here, I didn't have a doctor," Schmidt remarks. "When I needed a tetanus shot, I drove twenty miles to the Band-Aid station. They said come back tomorrow. I went to a doctor's office somewhere. They said forget it, you're not a regular customer." Forrest West, in an adjacent exam- ining room, talks with Seth -Fuller, a farmer, born in 1904. Fuller is West's neighbor. Fuller remembers when West and Forman first came into the area and went to potluck suppers and casserole dinners, meeting people and asking about plans for a health center -in effect, applying to be its doctors. Six communities-China, Albion, Unity, Palermo, Thorndike, and Troy, which are separated by dairy- land and forested hills-had been identified by the federal government as grossly underserved, and money had been raised locally for a modest wooden structure. Forman and West were, in Forman's words, on "the hip- f ! l ((j t f . L "' ' , , 4< "" .... Autumn indispensables, now with an appealing fresh-air feeling. At fine stores nationwide. Send for "The J. G Hook Woman. ' an mfonnative brochure 485 Seventh Avenue · New York · 10018 63 II